Digital transformation beyond Covid: what to keep and what to ditch?

As days and nights were smudged into one and bound­aries between home and work dis­solved, it’s lit­tle sur­prise many of us felt unmoored dur­ing the lock­downs. Experts have labelled the phe­nom­e­non ‘tem­po­ral dis­in­te­gra­tion’, where we were dis­lo­cat­ed from time and lost our sense of con­ti­nu­ity.

One facet of life where every­thing seemed to accel­er­ate was in the dig­i­tal realm. As our phys­i­cal lives slowed to a halt, the only way busi­ness­es could con­tin­ue to oper­ate at all was a break­neck piv­ot to dig­i­tal. If organ­i­sa­tions did not have remote poli­cies in place, they were cer­tain­ly feel­ing it when the pan­dem­ic struck, as they raced to build the kind of infra­struc­ture that would allow our work lives to con­tin­ue.

Fre­quent­ly, that meant slap­dash solu­tions: strap­ping togeth­er a bit of Zoom here, a touch of col­lab­o­ra­tion soft­ware there. It’s under­stand­able that busi­ness­es may have select­ed their dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in a hur­ry – but equal­ly, this is the rea­son why these hasti­ly put togeth­er meth­ods may fail in the long run.

Ad hoc approach­es are typ­i­cal­ly nei­ther strate­gic nor sus­tain­able. Now that this peri­od of tem­po­ral dis­in­te­gra­tion draws to a close, it’s an appro­pri­ate time for busi­ness­es to reflect – tak­ing the best of the pan­dem­ic-era solu­tions, drop­ping what wasn’t work­ing, and devis­ing a plan to be more delib­er­ate from here on out.

Tools like dig­i­tal white­boards and col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, make the cut. With more than 80% of all firms expect­ed to keep some form of hybrid work­ing arrange­ments in place, accord­ing to the Char­tered Man­age­ment Insti­tute, this kind of con­nec­tiv­i­ty is here to stay and with good rea­son.  

“The pan­dem­ic dras­ti­cal­ly altered ways of work­ing for most busi­ness­es, so it’s a mat­ter of neces­si­ty that employ­ers main­tain some of the changes to fit mod­ern employ­ees’ needs,” says Ulla Riber, head of group work­place man­age­ment, ISS Glob­al. 

With the US’s Depart­ment of Labor sta­tis­tics reveal­ing that the great res­ig­na­tion remains under­way, it’s essen­tial employ­ers take stock of employ­ees’ expec­ta­tions around flex­i­bil­i­ty and their work­places, Riber says. Even as restric­tions lift, Riber notes that ISS’s mon­i­tor­ing has found con­tin­ued demand for tech­nolo­gies relat­ing to the pan­dem­ic, such as sys­tems for book­ing desks. Col­lab­o­ra­tion tools are a clear route to ensur­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion from a dis­persed work­force.

And as the work­force became more wide­ly dis­trib­uted, ves­tiges of tra­di­tion­al perime­ter pro­tec­tion such as cyber defence also fad­ed. Busi­ness­es have had to wise up about the vast expan­sion of poten­tial attack sur­faces; not to men­tion the impor­tance of edu­cat­ing indi­vid­ual employ­ees about secu­ri­ty. 

Mean­while, staff well­be­ing should always have been a pri­or­i­ty but dur­ing the heights of Covid-19, it became a more press­ing con­cern – as might be expect­ed in a pan­dem­ic. Sur­veys have shown that HR automa­tion grew dras­ti­cal­ly over this time, not only with per­for­mance-man­age­ment tools but as a way to mea­sure staff sen­ti­ment and well­be­ing. Tech­nolo­gies that help staff stay healthy, be pro­duc­tive and remain secure equip organ­i­sa­tions with a dig­i­tal toolset that will be vital no mat­ter the wider sit­u­a­tion.

Although the pan­dem­ic era has undoubt­ed­ly proved the wor­thi­ness of digi­ti­sa­tion, there may also be a ten­den­cy to view ‘doing dig­i­tal’ as a catch-all salve to all kinds of prob­lems, whether pro­mot­ed by ven­dors look­ing for an easy sale or as a result of organ­ic hype. This atti­tude can eas­i­ly place busi­ness­es in a tricky spot, with dis­ap­point­ing imple­men­ta­tions often putting organ­i­sa­tions off digi­ti­sa­tion in gen­er­al, accord­ing to Richard Jef­fery, nation­al direc­tor at social enter­prise The Growth Com­pa­ny.

“I’ve seen a lot of busi­ness­es buy­ing soft­ware or hard­ware because they’d heard that they need it,” he says. “But when that fails, it’s become a big bar­ri­er to dig­i­tal adop­tion.” 

Anoth­er issue dur­ing the pan­dem­ic was acces­si­bil­i­ty, Jef­fery adds. All the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy in the world is of lit­tle use if peo­ple are left behind due to infra­struc­ture not-spots, lack of edu­ca­tion or poor­ly applied tech­nol­o­gy that isn’t user-friend­ly. 

And, with all the change, cul­tur­al hang­overs may be the trick­i­est symp­toms to cure. One result of that tem­po­ral dis­in­te­gra­tion was long hours and a vir­tu­al kind of pre­sen­teeism – where staff, in the knowl­edge that they could be online at any time, felt com­pelled to show their faces for the sake of it.

“The pan­dem­ic helped us begin to chal­lenge the prin­ci­pal of pre­sen­teeism,” says Ita Waller, group HR direc­tor at inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing agency Unlim­it­ed. “But mov­ing for­ward, it’s impor­tant work­ing hours are respect­ed, espe­cial­ly when work­ing from home when it’s easy to stay online.”

Like­wise, Waller adds, main­tain­ing a bal­ance of gen­uine flex­i­bil­i­ty is cru­cial because, accord­ing to a Microsoft report, 67% of staff desire more in-per­son work, not less – so as busi­ness­es piv­ot to hybrid work or down­size office space, they need to be mind­ful of the needs of all staff, not just the most vocal. “Mak­ing the office acces­si­ble for peo­ple to col­lab­o­rate in per­son should be encour­aged as much as respect­ing people’s deci­sions to stay at home,” Waller says. The shape that this will take is unde­ter­mined, but it’s going to require a care­ful bal­ance of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and phys­i­cal spaces.

Digi­ti­sa­tion is a process, so busi­ness­es that have man­aged to suc­cess­ful­ly lever­age the abnor­mal con­di­tions of the pan­dem­ic era to their advan­tage should not rest on their lau­rels. 

Instead, they should try to cap­i­talise on the exist­ing momen­tum. For com­pa­nies at any stage of the process, this requires a step back – going back to basics, plan­ning, and focus­ing on desired out­comes, says the Growth Company’s Jef­fery. The times may have been strange, but rudi­men­ta­ry prin­ci­ples like being mind­ful about things like pro­cure­ment remain. “Busi­ness­es should work out what they want to achieve with dig­i­tal,” he says. “Look at what dig­i­tal can do to change your vision – can you attain faster, more encom­pass­ing change? Make sure your sys­tems and process­es are effi­cient before you digi­tise them – you don’t want to digi­tise a rub­bish process.”

Mean­while, notes Unlimited’s Waller, tech­nolo­gies like robot­ic process automa­tion should be used to auto­mate day-to-day tasks; this isn’t about replace­ment but effi­cien­cy and giv­ing time back to employ­ees – to help alle­vi­ate those pan­dem­ic bug­bears like long hours and poor work-life bal­ance. 

Hybrid work­ing has empow­ered employ­ees, she says, and hav­ing an open approach to hybrid work­ing, while con­stant­ly assess­ing and adapt­ing work­ing prac­tices and tech­nol­o­gy will ensure busi­ness­es of all stripes get the best out of dig­i­tal, whether with future dis­rup­tions or – touch wood – oper­at­ing in plain old nor­mal­cy.